Alan Arkin as Yossarian, in 1970’s “Catch-22.”
Just a few quick thoughts:
- Affirmative Action — The court’s decision on this is the most significant of several this week, and if I had the day off I might try to write something about it. But I don’t, so I’ll leave it to y’all for now. If I were one of the ones-and-zeroes people, I could rip something out quickly, because all I’d have to do is copy and paste from my “side’s” talking points. But I acknowledge the painful complexity of this issue, so I’m neither cursing nor cheering. There’s a lot to explore here… (If y’all can get beyond the impulse to castigate me for perceiving painful complexity…)
- Goodbye, Yossarian — This item, as much as anything, prompted me to put up an Open Thread. I’ll miss Alan Arkin, and I hope you will, too. I can’t think of anything I ever saw him in that I didn’t think was great. But I still think of him as Yossarian, in Mike Nichols’ brilliant film adaptation of Catch-22. Months before I saw the movie — multiple times — in a theater, I read a cover story about it in TIME magazine, to which I subscribed in high school. After 53 years, I still remember a sentence from that story more or less verbatim: “Fear rides on his back like a schizoid chimp,” the writer said of Arkin’s suitability in the role of the famed Assyrian. I was proud to look it it up a moment ago and find out my memory had it right. Later, he became known for his brilliant performances as crusty old guy. I’d like to have had the chance to tell him how good I thought he was before the end, but he probably would waved the praise off, saying something like “Argo f___ yourself!”
- Still brooding over history — Just another heads-up, like the last one, that you’re likely to be reading a lot more about history here. Increasingly, I see Americans’ gross ignorance of history and civics as being a national crisis likely to bring an end to this country much quicker than we’re likely to get our feet wet from rising sea levels (to mention something other folks rightly worry about). This week the concern was kicked off by this passage from a George Will column: “The National Assessment of Educational Progress, a.k.a. ‘the nation’s report card,’ for 2022 shows that a decline that started in 2014 (do not blame the pandemic) continues: Just 13 percent and 20 percent of eighth-graders met U.S. history and civics proficiency standards, the lowest rates ever recorded, erasing gains made since the 1990s.” And that’s one of the less alarming things I’ve read on the subject lately. Can you get a harrumph outta this guy, George? You bet. HARRUMPH!
- As the South Stews, Temperatures Are Set to Rise in the West, Too — Well, why should we be the only ones to suffer?…
- Indiana Jones — Hey, this movie might be great, but when I saw the image from it shared below this morning, it freaked me out a little. I usually try to not to panic over this AI stuff, but this morning I couldn’t help responding, “Oh, come on people, stop it with the fake imagery. What’s next? Are you going to ‘de-age’ him another 20 years for a ‘prequel’ to ‘American Graffiti?’… ‘The Roots of Bob Falfa?’…”
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Yes, let’s hear more about those “painful complexities” involved in allowing colleges and univerities to use race as one of many factors in selecting which prospective students will be permitted to grace their campuses. They seem to have been able to navigate this selection process quite well and to good effect — and just about pain-free as far as we can tell.
Well, until I have a free day to get into that, how about telling me something — how do you define “affirmative action?” Over the years, I’ve seen it defined different ways, ranging from diligent outreach to make sure you have a diverse pool of applicants to guaranteed outcomes (what is often derided as “quotas”).
In the meantime, here’s an interesting piece that paints a pretty good picture of why it’s complicated, at least from one perspective. It’s by a guy who ultimately in favor of affirmative action (or at least he’s “not an opponent” of it), but he certainly sees the problems that come up along the way…
I Teach at an Elite College. Here’s a Look Inside the Racial Gaming of Admissions.
But while he sees problems in the system as it has exist, he believes those problems will get even WORSE with the court’s ruling. And maybe he’s right.
In any case, he totally gets that this is not a ones-and-zeroes issue. Which it isn’t…
The professor states:
“I am not an opponent of affirmative action. I don’t think I would have gotten into Haverford College as an undergraduate if it had not been for affirmative action, and the same is probably true of my Ph.D. program at New York University and the professorship I now hold at Bates College. I believe that affirmative action works, that it is necessary to redress the historical evils of chattel slavery and its myriad afterlives and, above all, that it is a crucial counterbalance against the prevailing system of de facto white affirmative action that rewards many academically mediocre (and wealthier) students for having legacy parents or for being good at rowing a boat.”
Seems like some rather considerable benefits when compared to the relatively minor matters he describes as inadvertent consequences of affirmative action in college admissions – which, to be precise (since I still hear some talk about “quotas,” including from some who definitely know better) means nothing more than race being one of MANY factors taken into account in the selection process. And that process, it should be pointed out, likely would have more slots available for minorities if the offspring of legacies and donors, as well as applicants who are skilled at rarer types of sports (and who tend to be White), weren’t given plus points on that basis.
The goal of getting more minorities into the pipeline toward success is a good one. And the means used to achieve that goal is effective – more effective than any other. Still seems rather straightforward and largely uncomplicated.
Well, if you are undisturbed by the drawbacks he describes in his first grafs, then I congratulate you on your imperturbability…
Or should that be unflappability?
Insouciance?
Nah. I think it’s imperturbability…
See, this is why it takes me so long to write anything on the blog, or anywhere else…
Yes, unperturbed, or whatever. What he describes is nothing more than what prospective students do all the time in all sorts of way: tailor their applications to make them as appealing as possible — making assumptions, which may not reflect reality, about which criteria may be applied. If a white applicant wants to seem “less white” by, say, claiming a line from Lil Nas X as his life’s mantra, then so be it.
Insouciance, indeed…
I’m still left wondering what supposed threat is posed by affirmative action in student admissions, as actually practiced (and not the bugaboos in peoples’ heads), that outweighs the benefits offered.
Is it because it gives rise to white resentment?
I’m not sure what you’re asking, regarding “threats.”
I have spoken of complexity, and complexity lies in the question of whether they are a good idea, whether they are the correct way to address the ills one is trying to address.
And here’s what that op-ed piece suggests — that these incentives (which only some of the most selective institutions employ) encourage young people to think of themselves in terms of their race or ethnicity. I find that completely unacceptable in a liberal democracy — no one, whether white, black, or what have you, should be thinking of his or her worth in such terms. I gather that it doesn’t bother you the way it does me — and, from what I gathered, the author of the piece. I think that’s where we are in this discussion….
If complexity is the goal, then this takes much too broad a brush. In his commentary on affirmative action in admissions, the professor mentions a few instances in which he assisted prospective students in tailoring their applications in a manner that supposedly made them more appealing – based on criteria they believed MAY be applied in the selection process. It’s rather a stretch to conclude from this merely tactical tailoring of an application that these students think of themselves wholly in racial/ethnic categories, basing the entirety of their personal sense of worth in those terms. But it’s an even greater stretch to inflate a few cases of application tailoring into a threat against liberal democracy, entirely discounting an important policy tool that has proven beneficial to many who otherwise might not have enjoyed the opportunities it provided them.
And that’s not even to mention the undeniable fact that race/ethnicity/gender and all those other categories you despise do indeed play a role in our daily lives. Pretending they don’t does not make them any less relevant. It merely attempts to ignore their continued relevance.
“It’s rather a stretch to conclude from this merely tactical tailoring of an application that these students think of themselves wholly in racial/ethnic categories, basing the entirety of their personal sense of worth in those terms.”
Well, it might be a stretch to you — probably because you so very much want it to be a stretch. But this guy thought it was worth kicking off his column with that point, and the NYT thought it was worth publishing that way.
Ken, you might want to stop trying so hard to find fault in every observation I make on this blog. Relax. Perceive things as they are, and as they are intended by the one offering them. This isn’t a contest. There will be no prizes awarded…
“This guy thought it was worth kicking off his column with that point” — but he then reached the opposite conclusion: that affirmative action, on balance, worked to society’s betterment, not its detriment.
That’s not an insignificant difference.
Yes, and of course that’s a point I made at the beginning — so what are we talking about here?
It seems to be a discussion of whether affirmative action plans such as those practiced at these schools is an unadulterated good, 100 percent good, in a ones-and-zeroes sense… OR…
That it’s complicated — that it’s a thing with very significant drawbacks, while at the same time this writer pronounces that “Let me be clear that I am not an opponent of affirmative action.” It’s important that he word it that way, because what he has said previously would tend to give a reasonable person a different impression.
So does he switch over to the simple “Affirmative Action GOOD!” approach, the ones and zeroes approach? No. Somewhat later, he says:
This absurd argument you insist upon pursuing results from your objection to my seeing the “the painful complexity of this issue.” This made you quite indignant, that I felt no inclination to be “one of the ones-and-zeroes people.”
You object to that a lot. It seems like by now, you would have figured out that I don’t live by the talking points of the two sides in this idiotic binary culture we have. I think about things. I ask other people to think about things. I don’t respond well to being hectored to get in line with the orthodoxy of one side or the other.
And if that bothers you, why do you keep coming here?
Well, Ken, you just answered this with something starting with “To further belabor an already belabored point:…”
Tell you what; let’s not. Let’s move on from this tedium. But fret not; I’m sure I’ll soon say something on another topic that will impel you to ride forth to correct me…
No, let’s do — belabor it further.
How ungracious of you to block substantive comments and insist on giving yourself the last word.
Yeah. You’d think that this was my blog or something… you might even think that I think guests I allow to comment here should act like guests, and not insist upon their right to have the last word themselves.
Ken is the guest who enters your parlor and immediately starts talking about how ugly the drapes are on your windows, and how those ugly drapes are contributing to your own abysmal failure to correctly perceive the world outside those windows.
And who gets huffy if the host tries to steer the conversation in more sociable direction…
I think we all need to remember that the SCOTUS decision really doesn’t impact most colleges.
Schools like Clemson, South Carolina, Lander, Coastal Carolina, Francis Marion, etc- are accepting most people that apply and meet a basic set of requirements. They aren’t having to make many decisions to exclude anyone.
Their classes are diverse in numerous ways.
Those schools are still trying to make sure they have a diverse student body- and they are succeeding in that goal.
This decision really did focus pretty narrowly on a few elite colleges.
So long as he doesn’t do it in Blackface.
The pay wall got me. Hope you will include some of the author’s observations in your musings when you get there.
Sorry. That’s a big problem these days.
I seldom run across anything worth reflecting upon in media that are free for all to read. Because that’s mostly uninteresting junk, stuff that doesn’t stimulate anything recognizable as thought.
Sometimes, when I do a single-focus post based on one piece, I quote as extensively as I can, in keeping with Fair Use (which of course involves guessing), in an effort to bring readers into the picture. This piece did not lend itself to that. You need to read the whole thing. In its entirety, the piece presents disturbing pictures of the consequences of these policies, but I cited the point at which he says he’s for this form of affirmative action anyway.
You’ll see that Ken, undisturbed by the rest of it, quotes that paragraph in its entirety. Which is true and accurate, but didn’t give you a full holistic picture of the piece.
I’ll presume upon the forbearance of the editors and try to give you enough to give you a somewhat wider picture. Here’s how it starts out:
Anyway, that’s what he means by “racial gamification.”
But don’t go by the impression you’re getting from us, if you can possibly gain access to the whole piece. It’s a good piece, fairly outlining one man’s perspective on a complicated problem…
Here’s the full article w/o paywall:
https://dnyuz.com/2023/06/29/i-teach-at-an-elite-college-heres-a-look-inside-the-racial-gaming-of-admissions/
Peter Brötzmann, the heart — and lungs — of European free jazz, dead at 82 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wgA9L5TN5M
Lesson learned. If it is something from Bill, turn down the volume a tad just in case. I’m ok I think …
Hello. Brad will know who this is. Prolly Bill.
In Cat’s Cradle, Vonnegut states, “Everything in this book is a lie.”
I’ve decided to state that freely; “Everything I say is a lie.”
I’ve been working on my major motion picture. I’ll let Brad decide who plays him in my movie.
If Harrison is ok, he can play me. I, too, have a few “Spots” on my brain. My head MAY be harder.
Catch-22. My life. I’m insane, but since I know that, I’m not insane.
I do check in once in a while. But think Kerouac, Kesey, Wolfe (Electric Kool Aide and The Right Stuff), Hunter S Thompson. I’m just a tad restless. Maybe.
I hope to have more time to contribute. Miss this Blog!
I may be a Grandfluencer, a wanna be, AI. I’m just not sure …
Yet. I have someone helping me out!
Another nickname. OG out ,,,
Bonus Points if any “crackers” can define OG.
Hey Bill. You ain’t no cracker; I’ll leave it at that. It’s a honor to be a fairly rare white blue-eyed “OG.”
I love how you comment with music. It appears others not so much. Oh well …
😉
Something went wrong, truth too strong.
Crying more than you will ever know.
Pride getting the best of me?
Dance with the Ghost of our long, lost love …
Thank you Ken and Brad.
I needed a laugh Brad! Will you two just get a room and work it out! Or a DUEL!
Our justice system is HORRIBLY BROKEN, local to Supreme. The internet has catalyzed “factions” (Federalist Papers may have mentioned factions).
I learned aviation by the seat of my pants, as we played with Instrument Landing Systems. The bleeding edge of the transition from analog to digital.
Journalism: Analog (paper) failed, and digital is a best “disruptive.” For now, I hope.
I was trained to deal with my head spinning and making reasonable decisions (good?). I am TIRED of having to use that skill. My teller today is a much younger female Veteran. We had an Oscar Mike moment.
I’m healing by Listening to the Children. My Ministry.